The treason of Arnold swept like a black cloud across the sky, broke, and left everything as before.  That such a base peril should have existed was alarming and hateful.  That it should have been exploded harmlessly made all men give a deep sigh of relief.  But neither the treason nor its discovery altered the current of events one jot.  The summer had come and gone.  The French had arrived, and no blow had been struck.  There was nothing to show for the campaign but inaction, disappointment, and the loss of the Carolinas.  With the commander-in-chief, through it all, were ever present two great questions, getting more portentous and more difficult of solution with each succeeding day.  How he was to keep his army in existence was one, and how he was to hold the government together was the other.  He had thirteen tired States, a general government almost impotent, a bankrupt treasury, and a broken credit.  The American Revolution had come down to the question of whether the brain, will, and nerve of one man could keep the machine going long enough to find fit opportunity for a final and decisive stroke.  Washington had confidence in the people of the country and in himself, but the difficulties in the way were huge, and the means of surmounting them slight.  There is here and there a passionate undertone in the letters of this period, which shows us the moments when the waves of trouble and disaster seemed to sweep over him.  But the feeling passed, or was trampled under foot, for there was no break in the steady fight against untoward circumstances, or in the grim refusal to accept defeat.

It is almost impossible now to conceive the actual condition at that time of every matter of detail which makes military and political existence possible.  No general phrases can do justice to the situation of the army; and the petty miseries and privations, which made life unendurable, went on from day to day in ever varying forms.  While Washington was hearing the first ill news from the south and struggling with the problem on that side, and at the same time was planning with Lafayette how to take advantage of the French succors, the means of subsisting his army were wholly giving out.  The men actually had no food.  For days, as Washington wrote, there was no meat at all in camp.  Goaded by hunger, a Connecticut regiment mutinied.  They were brought back to duty, but held out steadily for their pay, which they had not received for five months.  Indeed, the whole army was more or less mutinous, and it was only by the utmost tact that Washington kept them from wholesale desertion.  After the summer had passed and the chance for a decisive campaign had gone with it, the excitement of expected action ceased to sustain the men, and the unclothed, unpaid, unfed soldiers began again to get restive.  We can imagine what the condition of the rank and file must have been when we find that Washington himself could not procure an express from the quartermaster-general, and was obliged to send a letter to the Minister of France by the unsafe and slow medium of the post.  He was expected to carry on a war against a rich and powerful enemy, and he could not even pay a courier to carry his dispatches.